republicans make horrible backseat drivers.

My mom and I were trying to take the subway back to my apartment, but the roof of the platform was leaking steadily no matter where we tried to stand. I was convinced it was acid rain, but before I could get too freaked out our train arrived. At least, it was supposed to be the F train, but the flashing screen on the side said it was the B6 bus. Close enough.

I found a couple of seats for me and my mom, but a young, well-dressed woman with a perfect ponytail and a pearl necklace shoved onto the train in front of my mom and sat down next to me. I said, "Excuse me, but my mother was going to sit there." The women said, "Oh," and didn't move. Luckily there were two more seats on the other side of her, so I just got up and sat down next to my mom. "Thanks for nothing," I said, against my better judgment. The woman proceeded to shriek at me for being a rude bitch for the rest of the ride.

At some point the train/bus morped into a shared car that I was driving. My mom was in the back seat and the horrible woman was sitting up front next to me. She criticized my driving constantly, from not taking a tight enough right turn to not using my turn signal early enough. My mom and I tried to figure out the best route home. The woman interrupted us, saying, "But I'm not going to your house. You have to drop me off at work." I asked her where she worked, and she said, "I work for the Glenn Beck show. That's G-L-E-N-N-" I cut her off and told her I knew who Glenn Beck was.

I was trying not to let her get under my skin, but the road signs were really confusing and I was worried about getting lost. When I tried to get onto a highway ramp that she disapproved of, I accidentally turned onto someone's driveway. She smirked through all the three-point turns I had to make to get us back out. And then she was gone. I'm pretty sure my mom shoved her out of the moving car when I wasn't looking.

where i live and what i did

A city has been developing, night by night. It's increasingly hilly in the east, where I live, in a neighborhood full of coffee shops and churches and private clubs for horse enthusiasts. Its subway system is labyrinthine. At least four lines intersect at each stop, in cavernous stations with tiered platforms set up like an Escher painting. The newest stations are shiny, metallic mega-malls, full of stores and robots. The station near my house is older, dirt-packed and grungy. Trains stop at random spots, sometimes on different tracks that are only accessible by jumping down between the rails and scurrying across with all the rats.

On weekends I take the train west. At the far end of the city, the densely-packed neighborhoods give way to a series of narrow islands. A single road and multiple bridges connect them, lined with palm trees and roadside diners that specialize in key lime pie.

Most recently, I left the town entirely and ended up in Las Vegas, my least favorite place on Earth. I wandered through themed hotels and ended up with some guy who looked like Eric Bana in the backwoods on the outskirts of town. The heavy forestation seemed unlikely. We met in an abandoned campsite in someone's backyard and fell into step with each other as we beat through the underbrush.

We eventually parted ways, only to run into each other a few hours later. Eric Bana was going nuts. He was jumping over cars and sweating profusely. "You have to help!" he screamed. Apparently someone had called him and told him they had been kidnapped and taken to an unknown location, where they were tied to a chair, stabbed with a very large fish hook, and left to die. Eric Bana was trying to locate this person. "Call 911!" he told me. So I did.

* * *

I woke up early the next morning in a cold sweat, knowing I had done something horribly wrong. The 911 operator had put me on hold, so I told Eric Bana I'd call them back in a few minutes. He ran off to jump over more cars and break into houses and crack some skulls. I wandered back to the main strip and completely forgot about the unknown person gutted like a fish in some rec room somewhere. Vegas does that to you; it's so distracting. I desperately called 911 again, and left a message for Eric Bana, but in the back of my mind I knew it was too late.

my shiny derelict future

I was an old homeless woman who had been living on the same street corner for twenty-five years. That stability was the reason I was able to get such a good rate on car insurance. The agent cut me an excellent deal, and told me so as he shoved me up against the hood of a nearby car and pressed my face into the windshield. "The only reason I'm even giving an old hag like you any deal at all is because I know where you live, and I know I'll always be able to find you here," he said. "You got that?"

Then he had me fill out a form indicating all of the items in the lunch box my mother still made for me every morning. The rate went up slightly because I had switched from cheddar thins to whole wheat crackers, which seems counterintuitive, but who knows what crazy algorithm these insurance agents use to figure this stuff out.

The insurance wasn't actually for a car. I haven't driven in years, not since I moved to New York. But the fancy new subway cars require it. You know, the ones NASA designed? They strap you in like you're riding a roller coaster and take you from stop to stop elevated several thousand feet above the city. It's a big rush, but they haven't worked all the kinks out yet, so proof of insurance is still required.